One Piece: A Warlord's Path

Chapter 796: Massive Collision! The Straw Hat Crew Assembles

A few minutes prior.

Not far from the Research Institute.

Thump, thump, thump...

Brownbeard, whose lower half had been modified into a crocodile, sprinted through the wind and snow. Aside from Luffy perched on his head, his broad back carried Zoro, Usopp, Robin, and the skeleton Brook. The crew, clad in heavy winter coats pillaged from the Centaur Patrol, scanned their surroundings.

The bizarre landscape of Punk Hazard, half frozen wasteland, half raging inferno, was a rare sight indeed.

"Charge! Crocodile-Centaur!" Luffy shouted excitedly from his perch.

"What’s that?" Robin murmured, glancing back at the scene of devastation in the distance.

BOOM! BOOM! CRASH!

A series of thunderous roars echoed through the air.

"A battleship? There’s a Marine ship floating in the sky!"

"Are the Marines here too?"

"That noise... someone is fighting!"

"Wait, there was nothing there a moment ago!"

The group looked up to see a massive "membrane" appearing ahead. To their shock, a giant Marine warship, sliced clean in two, hovered in mid-air amidst a chaotic swarm of ice chunks and boulders. It was a staggering, breathtaking sight.

"What’s happening? Has something happened to Master?" Brownbeard grew anxious, his pace quickening.

As they drew closer to the battlefield, the roar of combat intensified, and the snowy ground trembled beneath them.

"Look... it’s Sanji and the others!"

Usopp, with the sharpest eyes of the group, was the first to spot Sanji locked in combat with a monster over five meters tall. He appeared to be struggling.

Luffy straightened up and peered forward, quickly spotting the rest of the crew. "You’re right! There’s Chopper, Franky, and Nami too!"

"Wait, why are they hanging out with the Marines?"

At that moment, Zoro spotted the last person he wanted to see: the female Marine who looked exactly like his late rival, Kuina.

Robin analyzed the battlefield. "It seems Nami and the others have formed an alliance with the Marines."

"Sanji-san is actually being suppressed by that monster... how terrifying!" Brook remarked, gripping his soul-solid cane in surprise.

"Tch. That nosebleed cook hasn’t improved much in the last two years," Zoro scoffed, feigning indifference. However, the gravity in his eyes and the way his right hand instinctively drifted toward Wado Ichimonji at his waist betrayed his true thoughts.

BOOM!

The monstrous figure, Dorot Otto, swung a massive metal axe into the earth. The terrifying force tore a hundred-meter fissure into the ground, kicking up a violent gale. The blast was so strong it forced Sanji back several steps.

"Whoa! What insane strength!" Luffy and Zoro hissed, genuinely impressed.

Before Sanji could regain his footing, Otto wrenched his axe from the ground and charged again.

"Gear 2!"

Luffy’s skin instantly flushed pink, emitting plumes of white steam. He vanished from Brownbeard’s head in a blur.

"Gomu Gomu no... Bazooka!"

Appearing above Otto as if by teleportation, Luffy stretched his arms twenty meters back and snapped them forward with such velocity they seemed to fire compressed air.

"What?!"

Otto’s Observation Haki alerted him to the sudden threat. He pulled his axe back, bracing it before him.

CLANG!

The impact sent a visible shockwave rippling through the air. Otto’s feet sank into the earth as he was plowed backward over ten meters, leaving two deep trenches in the snow.

The moment the strike ended, Luffy landed and deactivated Gear 2.

"Gear 3!"

Luffy bit his thumb and blew hard. Air flooded into his bone structure, inflating his right arm into the limb of a giant.

" Gomu Gomu no... Elephant Gun!"

Luffy roared, throwing a massive fist hardened by Armament Haki. The punch generated a piercing howl of wind.

"Bastard!" Otto snarled. Unable to counter in time, he hurriedly coated his axe in Armament Haki and swung it upward.

KABOOM!

The earth convulsed. A shockwave swept outward, stripping the snow from the ground for a hundred meters and turning the air into a blinding white-out. The solid earth beneath them shattered, spiderwebbing into a massive crater.

Caught off balance, Otto couldn’t withstand the weight of the giant fist. He was sent flying like a black streak, crashing through the blizzard and smashing into an iceberg hundreds of meters away.

RUMBLE...

The impact shattered the ten-meter-tall iceberg, burying him under a mountain of frozen debris.

Luffy stood his ground, his arm shrinking back to normal. He adjusted his straw hat and asked coldly:

"I’m asking you... just who are you people?"

"Straw Hat Luffy...!" Cavendish gritted his teeth, looking grimly at the newcomer and the crew gathered behind him.

"Phew... arrived just in time, didn’t you?" Sanji exhaled a ring of smoke, looking relieved.

"Luffy!" Nami, Chopper, and Franky cried out in delight.

Watching from the sidelines, Jason hissed under his breath, "That’s a blunder."

He realized they should have wiped out Smoker and the G-5 Marines first before dealing with the Straw Hats. Now that the whole crew was together, suppressing them would be a nightmare. He hadn’t expected Smoker to actually cooperate with pirates.

"Doctor Jason, it looks like we’re in trouble," Cavendish said, stepping in front of Jason with his sword drawn.

"I know," Jason replied solemnly. "We might need to notify the Captain."

"Hey, it’s not that bad yet!" Cavendish twitched, signaling his subordinates.

"Bastards! You dare oppose the Chris Pirates?"

"Kill them all! Marines and pirates alike!"

Within a minute, hundreds of pirates leapt from the Chris sub-ship, charging forward to face off against the G-5 Marines led by Tashigi.

Crumble...

"Straw Hat! You’ve got some nerve!"

Otto shook his head as he crawled out of the ice rubble, shards sliding off his massive frame.

"Man, this guy is tough," Luffy noted, surprised that the monster took an Elephant Gun to the face and seemed unscathed.

"That look... is he an Ancient Zoan user?" Zoro muttered, before adding, "Or is he just a freak?"

"Cavendish!"

Otto looked at the Straw Hat crew, twin plumes of white steam snorting from his nostrils. His aura grew more malevolent, and a flash of crimson streaked through his golden-brown beastial eyes.

"Let Hakuba out. I’m making sure not a single soul leaves Punk Hazard alive today!"